The quiet thrill of moss hunting

Did you know that an expert on mosses is called a bryologist? And did you know that there are 754 species of moss in The British Isles? No? Well then you can be forgiven for not knowing that my brother, Mark, I write with pride, recently discovered another moss – number 755 – new not only to The British Isles but also to science.

Poking around along the banks of the River Camlad (the only river, I’m told, that flows from England into Wales) in Montgomeryshire, Mark came across an unfamiliar plant growing in dispersed patches on a riverbank at the edge of a pasture. Protocol requires that if, after taking a specimen home and examining it under the microscope, the bryologist cannot identify a moss, they send it to the county recorder. Since Mark is the county recorder for Montgomeryshire, he moved straight to stage two: send the moss to the national referee.